50 Years Of Great Investigative Journalism, From 'This Hour" To Amy Goodman

Over the years I've been fortunate enough to hear some of North America's top investigative journalists speak at conventions and other venues. The men and women I've met and heard speak have made an amazing contribution to society, protecting democracy and uncovering corruption.

One recent evening it was Amy Goodman, the amazing do-it-all journalist with Democracy Now, the independent U.S. radio and TV program. She was in Toronto and gave an uplifting talk.

The evening was sponsored by the Canadian Journalism Foundation, and asking the questions was David Walmsley, the Globe and Mail's editor-in-chief.

Goodman, a tiny, engaging woman, has certainly been one of America's top journalists over the past 20 years. At one point during the interview she emphasized the importance of giving voice to the voiceless -- going to the places where (in terms of media) there is silence.

Goodman described how she and fellow investigative journalist Allan Nairn came close to being shot at point blank range while trying to stop the military from massacring dozens of people in East Timor in the early 1990s. Goodman and Nairn were spared, possibly because they made it clear they were Americans and the weapons used by the soldiers were made in the U.S.

Many outstanding journalists came to Canada to speak at the conferences of the original Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) (now the Canadian Association of Journalists), an organization I helped set up in 1978.

Several of them are/were Canadians: Walter Stewart was, as good an investigative reporter and author as you'll find anywhere. Stewart's book, Towers of Gold, Feet of Clay: The Canadian Banks, was a massive success, staying on Canadian bestseller lists for more than a year. When he passed away, The Globe and Mail headed his obituary with: "He was Canada's Conscience."

The little-known Ron Haggart , a bit of a grump who didn't like speaking publicly, was one of Canada's greats as the guts and backbone of the CBC-TV's investigative program The Fifth Estate for many years. A prolific author of letters to newspapers, Haggart never suffered fools gladly.

We also heard from Linden MacIntyre, recently retired from the more recent era of The Fifth Estate. MacIntyre, now an author, has great journalistic instincts, and is a wonderful story teller. MacIntyre was part of The Fifth Estate team that uncovered information proving that Steven Truscott had not murdered a young girl, in what was one of Canada's most controversial crime investigations.

British-born Michael Maclear became a legend among Canadian journalists who idolized the man for his independent-minded coverage of the Vietnam War. He worked for both CBC and CTV. Maclear strongly believed that documentaries needed to reflect a point of view. He was most proud of his independent film, Vietnam Goes to War.

This Hour Has Seven Days was probably Canada's best-ever current affairs show. Its confrontational methods were used so effectively to hammer unsuspecting politicians that the CBC took it off the air. It ran for less than two years in the 1960s. Over the years, the CIJ showed many of the program's amazing episodes and heard from its hosts, including the cool Patrick Watson.

On the U.S. side, I got to hear and know Seymour Hersh, perhaps America's most outstanding modern-day journalist. Hersh reminded me of Walter Stewart because they both had a nose and determination to uncover a big story. Hersh is the guy who broke the story about the Vietnam My Lai massacre and cover-up. His Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation helped turn Americans against their futile and insane war in Southeast Asia.

Noam Chomsky, perhaps America's most important progressive/anarchist thinker, has never been a journalist. But several of his many books have set high standards for investigative journalism. He can talk about any topic under the sun for at least three hours, non-stop. When Chomsky spoke, we needed a heavy-handed moderator to try to keep him on the topic he was supposed to speak about.

I'll briefly mention two other greats of a bygone era I've heard speak: Jessica Mitford, who exposed the corruption in the U.S. funeral business, and Morton Mintz, who investigated corporate misconduct in the tobacco, automotive and pharmaceutical industries for the Washington Post back when it was a great paper. In 1971, he co-wrote America, Inc.: Who Owns and Operates the United States.

Over all those years, I heard only one famous journalist give a laughable speech. Dan Rather was once Mr. All-American Journalist. He built a bit of a reputation working in small cities in Texas, rose to the face of CBC Nightly News, and went on to be a star with 60 Minutes.

In the 1980s, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the U.S.-based Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). I'm not sure what year it was, but we were excited that Dan Rather was coming to deliver the keynote address.

The first part of the speech was OK, though I can't remember what he said. The room was full of many of America's top investigative journalists. So what was the message of this icon of journalism: He explained over and over again that good journalism had to be: "Deep and down the middle."

What? That's it? While there was no laughter in the room, there was a lot of snickering. Maybe Rather thought he was addressing a first-year journalism school class.

Interestingly, following Amy Goodman's speech in Toronto there was a tense moment. Earlier, she made it clear that she has no time for corporate journalism. This caused the Globe's Walmsley to squirm a little in his chair. During the question period, someone in the audience asked Goodman what she thought about the fact that the Globe had endorsed the Harper government.

Avoiding a possible dust-up with the Globe, Goodman politely said she didn't know the situation well enough to respond.

During the question, the Globe editor-in-chief squirmed even more than before, and I seemed to detect his face turned a little red. He nervously leaned forward and said to the effect: "Wow, I dodged that one."

(Note: The hour-long Democracy Now radio program is available on some university or community-oriented stations in Canada. I highly recommend it. )

In 2004, a 60 Minutes II report alleged that George W. Bush failed to fulfill his service to the National Guard, relying on documents that were revealed to be forged. CBS News producer Mary Mapes got the infamous documents from a former U.S. Army National Guard officer who later admitted to lying about their source. The scandal resulted in Mapes's termination, the resignation of other news execs and, some speculate, anchor Dan Rather's retirement a year earlier than planned.

In 1980, Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke penned "Jimmy's World," about an 8-year old heroin addict, sparking an all-out police search for the boy that turned up nothing. Days after her article won the Pulitzer Prize, her editors confronted her about inconsistencies in her resume and she confessed that Jimmy didn't exist.

27-year-old Jayson Blair was an emerging force at the New York Times in 2003 when it was discovered that he had plagiarized and fabricated facts in at least 36 articles for the paper. An ensuing investigation revealed that Blair made up names, quotes and scenes for high-profile stories on Jessica Lynch, the families of other soldiers in Iraq and the 2002 sniper attacks. Then-executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resigned in the fallout of the scandal, which the Times called "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper."

A rising star at the political magazine, Glass plunged the New Republic into scandal in 1998, when it was discovered that he'd made up entire stories, as well as quotes and sources, over a three year period.

Jack Kelley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the paper, was found to have plagiarized and fabricated "substantial portions" of at least eight stories.

In 2004, the Boston Globe printed pictures from a porn website called "Sex in War" that it claimed depicted U.S. soldiers raping Iraqi women. Other news sources exposed the photos as fakes a week before the Boston Globe published them, and critics alleged that a simple Google search would've shown as much.

Weeks before the 2004 presidential election, Fox News political reporter Carl Cameron claimed in an article that candidate John Kerry received a pre-debate manicure and gloated about it. Cameron attributed fabricated quotes to Kerry, including "Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" and "Women should like me! I do manicures." Fox retracted the piece and apologized, blaming its publication on "bad judgment and fatigue."

It seemed too good to be true -- secret diaries of Hitler's spanning 13 years? -- and it was. Multiple organizations, including Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times, Newsweek, and German magazine Stern, wound up with egg on their face when the diaries proved to be fake.

Piers Morgan was editing the British tabloid when it ran pictures purportedly showing soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. It turned out that the pictures were fake. Morgan was fired.

New York Times reporter Miller got scoop after scoop about the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Unfortunately, there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Miller ultimately left the paper under a cloud. The Times took a serious hit to its reputation for publishing the stories.

Rupert Murdoch's papers got into a little bit of trouble for hacking into dead peoples' phones and spying on princes and things.

The tabloid got into trouble for running a picture of a man about to be killed by an oncoming train.

The network fired reporters and producers for a botched edit which distorted a tape of the Trayvon Martin shooter.

In this undated image released by The Public Theater, Mike Daisey is shown in a scene from "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," in New York. Daisey, whose latest show has been being credited with sparking probes into how Apple's high-tech devices are made, is finding himself under fire for distorting the truth. The public radio show This American Life retracted a story Friday, March 16, 2012, that it broadcast in January about what Daisey said he saw while visiting a factory in China where iPads and iPhones are made. (AP Photo/The Public Theater, Stan Barouh)

A 2005 USA Today investigative report revealed that the Bush administration paid columnists hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds to promote the administration's policies. Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus were among those who received money to support No Child Left Behind and Bush's marriage initiative in their pieces.

In 2003, CNN news chief Eason Jordan revealed that the network had known about Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses since 1990, but didn't report them to keep the Baghdad bureau open and protect the safety of its employees and sources.

The Oregonian failed to investigate evidence that Sen. Robert Packwood had sexually harassed several women, even though he had kissed one of the paper's own reporters after an interview. The Washington Post broke the story in 1992, creating a serious lack of trust that the Oregonian would take on the state's power brokers, which was only compounded in 2004 when the paper underreported former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt's statuatory rape of a 14-year old girl as an "affair."

A 1992 Dateline NBC segment showed a General Motors truck exploding after a low-speed crash with another car. GM later sued the network when the explosion was revealed to have been staged with remote-controlled devices, and NBC News President Michael Gartner was forced to resign.

Randy Michaels resigned as the Tribune Company's CEO in 2010 after allegations that his leadership transformed the company, which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, into "a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk." Michaels allegedly discussed the sexual suitability of co-workers, and told a waitress he would give her $100 to show him her breasts in front of his co-workers.

Top Hearst executive Scott Sassa resigned after a stripper released their sexting exchanges.